What Really Happened to Polarity Exchange?
It is no longer breaking news that Polarity exchange suffered an attack on February 17, 2023. This could not have made the crypto and wall street headlines because Polarity is a small exchange. It has less than a million dollars in daily trade, and less than 16 thousand registered users. The attack on February 17, was simply played down as a minor maintenance hitch. Meanwhile, customers and stakeholders should not worry as their funds are safe. In a tweet put out by the team on February 21, in their own words,
“Emergency Maintenance
The polarity team has identified an emergency issue. Service is temporally suspended. We are sorry for the disruption of our service and apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.”
Funds are SAFU.
However, the above statement was a lie, having observed the situation for some days, I reached out to one of the team members whose identity I can’t disclose here, open to say he believes the attack has caused them some financial loss.
Polarity exchange a hybrid decentralized platform built on the Turtle Network Blockchain enables users to trade crypto tokens and coins seamlessly.
Just a day ago the exchange summon the courage to go public by giving a published statement. after much questioning from customers and more than enough FUD spread, below is the summary of their security report as to what happened;
- A security incident occurred on February 17, 2023, resulting in a loss of $353,000 of users’ funds.
- In an abundance of caution, Polarity will now operate in withdraw-only mode on non-affected assets. Deposits are no longer possible.
- External cybersecurity experts were assisting with the investigation. The hacker wallet trail has been identified and the authorities have been notified. Security teams at the exchanges used by the hacker have also been contacted.
- Tokens affected: USDT, BTC, ETH, NLIFE, LINK, UNI, BNB, ZRX, DENT, BAT, AAVE, RSR, DOGE, KNC, PAXG, CGT, GRT, LRC, DAI, SUSHI, REN, MATIC, NMR, YFI, SNX, LTC, CAKE, COMP.
- Tokens not affected: ARRR, XMR, xUSD, XHV, GRLC, FIRO, DVPN, CASH, BCH, RTM, PRCY, ALIAS.
After acknowledging the loss of customers’ funds, the team went further to promise customers that they will recover the lost funds. In fact, measures are already in motion to see that happen. However, the above statement was just another lie. One thing is clear and certain, customers have totally lost trust in the team. The community hardly believes anything that the team says.
Since the first day of the attack, every statement put out there by the team has fallen short of credibility. Statements such as “funds are safe to later promise customers reimbursement of loss funds” all lack credibility.
Even Polarity Exchange community manager Grey Wolf came out to acknowledge this in a telegram group chat response to an aggrieved customer;
The team acknowledged this statement was in fact a mistake in the last report. As previosly mentioned, Polarity team believed their operational revenues were enough to cover the losses. The team understands that this incident has shaken your trust in Polarity, but we are committed to work on earning it back. Next week the team will present more information along with the proposed recovery options.
Even more fair play for someone to wonder out loud about the possibility of an inside job/rug pull. This type of behavior and fraud is arguably the most crypto thing of all, more crypto than cryptography itself.
These so far beg the question,
Was it just $353,000 in losses or there was more?
Will customers ever get back their stolen funds?
The above questions we will find out in the coming weeks, trust me to bring the entire detail of it all.
Personal Note From MEXC Team
Check out our MEXC trading page and find out what we have to offer! You can learn more about crypto industry news. There are also a ton of interesting articles to get you up to speed with the crypto world. Lastly, join our MEXC Creators project and share your opinion about everything crypto! Happy trading!
Join MEXC Creators Project or start your travel on MEXC
This article was contributed by our guest writer. Want to share something unique with over 10 million users? Check out the MEXC Creators program.
